Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm quite happy to do both amendments. They sort of go together. I compliment the parliamentary secretary and you for communicating the concerns of the committee to the minister, and for your achieving this result of restoring something to a bill that we only passed a while back.
I want to also thank my colleagues on the committee. It may have seemed at one time that I was making a big fuss about this bill, but you will recall from today's conversation that there are many committees, many working groups, meeting around regulatory change, all attached to this SPP, and the fact of the matter is that unless an earlier committee of some sort--be it the health committee or some other committee--requires that regulations come back to a standing committee, the normal modus operandi is that any regulatory changes are simply put in the Canada Gazette. They do not come back.
Because this was a change in legislation, we got wind of it. It had to come to us, but had it been only a change of regulation, my guess is none of us would have known it was happening.
In terms of this bill, it's not only going to be a good thing that we got to look at it, but it's also alerted us and, I hope, some of our colleagues on other committees to have the researchers keep their eye out for the Gazette when regulatory changes are published there and to bring them to our attention, because we may choose to call a meeting to call the departmental officials who are proposing such a regulatory change to come and explain it to us. We have gone through an exercise here that I think is very worthwhile from the perspective of keeping the parliamentary oversight on top of this whole SPP process.
I would like also to say, Mr. Chair, that I'm not opposed to certain regulatory harmonization. I can certainly see the value when it has to do with manufacturing and those kinds of things; however, it seems to me we should be on top of anything that has to do with the health and safety of Canadians every step of the way.
Thank you for your patience. I will be supporting these two amendments and the bill as amended.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.